


Loch

by Chiropterix



Category: Celtic Mythology, Scottish Mythology
Genre: Talking Animals, liberties taken with ecological accuracy, my imagination is its own tag
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:53:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23811868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiropterix/pseuds/Chiropterix
Summary: A curious selkie hears rumors about a deep reservoir that contains a secret. What she finds is more than she ever expected and she is suddenly faced with a life or death decision, all the while doing her best to avoid detection by humans desperate for a glimpse of the fabled Loch Ness Monster.
Kudos: 1





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The characters in this are inspired by artwork made for me by a dear friend. I hope to create a story for them that will do them justice.

Churning, dark blue ocean capped with white spray surged against a craggy shoreline along the southern edge of the Moray Firth. The sky above was overcast and ominous; the cold, gusting wind pitching the few gliding shorebirds haphazardly through the air. The autumn evening was closing in quickly and the elements served as a bitter reminder for the few people outside to hurry back to their warm dwellings. If a bystander on the beach were to cast a sharp eye on the sea in the dimming light they may have caught a glimpse of a sleek, silvery shape darting through the waves. They might have, for its large size, mistaken the creature for a small porpoise, not unheard of in this region but uncommon for the season. In reality the shape was a species much more frequent to the North Sea; it was a grey seal.  
Unusually large for her sex and species, this seal was nearly 2 meters in length from her narrow, doglike face to the end of her quick hind flippers. She used these to propel herself steadily southwest, her fore flippers flicking outward in the water to steer her through the ocean swells. Her fur was a beautiful shimmering silver dappled with black spots, her wide brown eyes and clever tiny ears attuned to every movement of the waves around her. She moved with a purpose.

Grey seals were widely traveled predators in the world’s oceans, and this one was no different. Throughout her long years she had seen a great many amazing things; from the freezing arctic waters patrolled by deadly blackfish to the deep Atlantic where she had met and swam with giant whales who circumnavigated the globe many times over. She has seen vibrant and teeming coral reefs in the warm southern waters and had ventured up uncountable rivers in uncharted lands. She had hunted massive schools of salmon and trout with her kin and searched for squid and mollusks in places so far from the daylight that even her excellent vision was tested.

This grey seal was healthy and well fed from the rich marine life found in northern climes. She was not here to hunt. And she was alone; the last of her kind she had seen were days behind her, lying out on the rocky shore and basking in the weak Scottish sunlight.

In the way of all things that live in the sea, she could speak to any other creature who shared her world. It was through this language that she and other seals are told of interesting places and of abundant food supplies, of prowling sharks or dangerous humans. She had whispered at otters and laughed with dolphins and followed the murmur of fish darting through vast kelp forests.  
Seals are intelligent, curious animals, and this one especially so. Her brown, limpid eyes were keen and watchful as she navigated the offshore waves searching for the place she sought. She was looking for an inlet. She was following stories she had been hearing for months.

And she had a secret. She was not simply a seal.

Humans had many names for her kind; the fin-folk, sirens, mermaids, and selkies. Their lore didn’t make much difference to her beyond the cautionary adage to never go near them regardless of the form she was in. And to never lose sight of your pelt when ashore. She never had. Once every seven years when she gained the ability to walk as a human woman she only ever left the sea briefly, clutching her sealskin close and carefully navigating the shore to explore and learn. She has seen quite a lot of Man in her lifetime, and seen the bloodshed and death they left in their wake. There were times when she ignored the call to the land entirely and didn’t step out of her skin for decades. She didn’t really see the appeal- the ocean held all she needed and wanted. And what this selkie wanted now was to find a legend.

She had first heard it from a bottlenose dolphin, who had heard it from a salmon. Of a deep, long inland reservoir with water stained ochre. The salmon who spawned there knew to keep a wary eye on the depths because occasionally Teeth would surge up and steal from their shoal. To the selkie that didn’t mean much, “teeth” to a fish was anything that might eat them, herself included. But a while later she swam deep to see a leviathan, a giant deepwater shark with milky blind eyes and slow, ponderous movement. In his halting, deliberate speech the shark had told her of a creature in a faraway loch that dwelled in water that had been fathomless but invigoratingly warm. This creature had been much larger than a shark, he said, and much more dangerous. Still another tale from a seagull, who had been gossiping on the beach to his companions about the long beast he claimed to have spotted from above a murky, rust colored lake in the highlands. 

The selkie loved rumors, and loved a good mystery, and had heard enough to know that she wanted to find the source for herself. Months of swimming down though the North Sea and following hearsay of the river that would lead her to the loch she sought had finally brought her to the Firth. And as she neared the mouth of the River Ness she had timed her arrival to occur in the night, for she had to pass under several marinas and near many towns to reach it. She found the outlet and swam gratefully into it, glad to pass unseen near so many humans. Several bridges and an undignified wallow of silt to wade through and she was soon traveling south along the shallow tributary towards the fabled reservoir she had learned was called Loch Ness.


	2. Chapter 2

The night was closing in as the selkie slipped quietly through the River Ness, her large, bright eyes allowing her to see clearly in the dark flowing water. She had passed the city which the humans call Inverness many hours ago and had steadily swam against the current and followed the meandering course doggedly southward. The river varied in depth and temperature. With her thick hide and insulating fur she was unbothered by the typical cold but it was the infrequent eddies of slightly warmer water that intrigued her. She had been listening to the salmon that schooled intermittently around her as she swam and, besides the chorus of “Teeth!” and “Beware!” when they noticed her there was a murmuring of “deep, warm, safe egg place, watch the deep, eggs warm, eggs safe” that had her curious mind teeming. 

Running parallel to the river was a human made-canal that was populated with docks and boats. She had learned from the other sealife to avoid it; the humans had built locks and aqueducts throughout and the likelihood of being seen or even trapped was more than she was willing to risk. She could hear it though, the water churning on the other side of the north embankment of the river, the mechanical sounds of human machinery even in the dark hours. She thought briefly that she might be taking more of a risk than her quest warranted, but pushed that musing aside as paranoia. 

The river was widening now and the salmon nearest her buzzed with anticipation; here they came to a small reservoir called Loch Dochfour, the last portion of their journey to spawn and either return to the sea or die. The water had grown murky and brackish, limiting visibility enough to draw the selkie closer to the shallower shoreline as she slowed her pace, resting in the absence of the river’s current. This loch was quite small, barely even warranting the name, and ahead she could see the last bend that would lead her out into the North basin of Ness. 

She neared the edge of the Loch and, after peering cautiously around for any sign of humans, lumbered out of the water in the shelter of a copse of trees at the tip of the lochend. Her breath turned to steam and she weaved her slender head back and forth as she took in the sight before her. 

Ahead was a narrow, yet very long body of water. She could see both the northern and southern shorelines clearly but they extended into the distance and out of sight. Here and there Human lights drew the eye, dotted irregularly and twinkling between the scrubby trees. Overhead the cloud cover was sparse and through it she could see patches of vivid starpaths and the glowing crescent moon. Her kind, and many other marine dwellers who could dream and imagine, believed that the stars in the inky blackness of night were the beacons that called spirits to the ocean of the afterlife. On clear nights when she found herself far from the electric lights on land, she could even see the swirling waves and currents filled with souls of the departed. She and other selkies lived long lives, sometimes for centuries if they were smart and avoided predators. The only time they really aged was when they came ashore in the guise of a human and became trapped. The thought put a chill in her bones; there was no worse fate than watching your soul wither in a dying, unnatural body so far from the sea. All the more reason to skip the seven-year skinwalking and avoid human life altogether.

She huffed a breath at her meandering thoughts and wiggled her body, so bulky and ungainly on land, back into the water. She began a leisurely swim out into the Loch. The water here was not deep, maybe between thirty or forty meters and even in the dim and nebulous surroundings she could see the rocky floor of the loch beneath her as she spun and rolled in the calm drift of the water. 

She continued farther in and observed the bed of the loch drop steadily away and she began to feel the real vastness of the tarn almost as a weight on her hide. She could sense before her that the loch fell to unfathomable depths and she gradually grew more unsure of herself, unconsciously angling northwards towards the shallower end. The muted sounds beneath the surface of the water didn’t tell her much but she could *feel* something, almost a vibration but so subtle she had to concentrate to sense it. What was more disturbing was the awareness that this place was saturated with discontent. 

All bodies of water, from streams to lakes to oceans, were places of welcome and safety to any creature that made its life within. All beings like her could feel that soundness of belonging and it helped beckon them back then they found themselves on land.

But this place, while deep and cool and dark, safe by all accounts even with the possibility of predators lurking, was soured slightly. It caused stress to run through the selkie all the way to her flippers, propelling her with more haste out from above the cavernous belly of the loch. It was with relief that she saw the floor, strewn with driftwood and rocks, rise to meet her in the gloom. She could see a few salmon pressing southward still and other smaller fish darting to and fro the sparse cover of the shallows. 

Once she was free of the oppressive sensation that had lurked in the depths of Ness, she attempted to continue her survey of this place along the north bank. She found however that she was distracted and jumpy now in the obscure nighttime hours and it was with resignation that she found a sandy spot of shoreline closely rimmed by dense scrub and trees. She ambled awkwardly out of the water and tucked herself into a shallow, silty depression in the beach and fell into an uneasy sleep, wondering again if she had been wise to make this trip in the first place.


	3. Chapter 3

Birdsong in the dawn sky woke the selkie the next morning. Her fur was dry and skin itchy from the silty soil she had nestled into while she slept and she idly scratched at herself with her clawed fore flippers as she yawned expansively and took in her surroundings. The gradually lightening sky allowed her to see all the way to the opposite shore. She could see specks moving across the cleared beaches in the distance; Humans. She could hear them too, the industrial sounds of their machines and cars and boats and the murmur of their voices even at a distance.

Surrounding her too were the sounds of wildlife; a small herd of sika deer a short distance from her resting place were sipping water at the shoreline and browsing the scrub. A lone heron sat patiently on a piece of driftwood close to shore, eyes trained in the water below for the movements of its prey. A family of tiny merganser ducks paddled nearby, dipping their heads under the surface and flapping their narrow wings to stretch them out after a long night sleeping in their trees. 

She watched them for a few moments in peace before indulging in another yawn that exposed her sharp teeth before scooting her bulk towards the water. The movement caused the deer nearby to start abruptly and bound away into cover. The shy little ducks burst from the surface of the water and flapped away, their small wings whistling urgently. Only the Heron stayed in its place, eyeing her with suspicion as she disappeared beneath the surface. 

She stretched herself out in the ebb and flow of the current, luxuriating in the way it soothed and smoothed her fur and wrapped her in a safe embrace. Her nervous fears from last night seemed far away and silly to her in the daylight, and she did a few underwater somersaults to limber up before striking out parallel to the shore again to resume her investigation of Loch Ness. 

The sky was clear today and as the sun climbed in the sky she could begin to see why so many creatures had remarked on the color of this loch; it was indeed a murky orange. There didn’t seem to be an abundance of algae or other organic life present to cause this, and while all bodies of water near Humans tasted subtly wrong there wasn’t an overt presence of filth or contamination.   
What the selkie didn’t know was that the color of Ness was caused by runoff from the surrounding peat-covered cliffs. That same runoff tended to make the water slightly acidic and therefore not much plant life flourished beneath the undulating surface. 

To her it only deepened the mystery of this place and she felt almost giddy to explore. It was simply caution about encountering humans and their boats, she explained to herself, that kept her from venturing far out into the open water again.

After an hour of unhurried swimming she spied on the shore a minor commotion; a small congregation of black birds flapping and cawing at one another as they fought over the stiff carcass of a fish. The selkie contemplated for just a moment before slowly approaching, presenting as much of her body above the surface as she could and gently blowing air out of her nostrils to draw their attention. She recognized the species from her many travels, as they frequently shared common feeding ground with gulls and other shorebirds; these were ravens. Large, incredibly intelligent creatures who were just as worldly and wise as any seal. They took notice of her almost immediately but ignored her entirely; they knew she was not a threat to them and that their meal was of little interest to an animal who vastly preferred live, fresh fish. She came far enough ashore that her hind flippers swayed in the waves as she braced her body upward to observe them. She knew if she was patient that eventually one of them wouldn't be able to help itself; everyone knew how nosy ravens were.

Sure enough at length one of the birds moved back from the fray and snapped its beak as if sated. He then cocked his angular head in her direction and hopped a few paces nearer to her, his attention now fully on the selkie. She smiled to herself and greeted it.

"Good day, and congratulations on your clever find for breakfast"

The bird clacked its beak again and rustled his feathers; ravens were also very susceptible to flattery, she knew. He replied with a croaking voice.

"Your kind are not often seen here...", he rasped. He seemed to stare at her closer before cawing out a laugh.

"Certainly never one like you, skinwalker! Why have you come all the way to Ness?"

"I am searching for the origins of a story", she said. "I have heard there is an interesting creature living in this Loch".

The crow took an abrupt hop backwards as though she had offended him, flapping his wings in agitation. His response took her by surprise and she backed up a pace herself.   
He cawed loudly at her several more times before making an effort to speak again.

"Are you more human than you appear? Do you also seek to harass the beast?" His words were scathing and angry and she blinked in shock at his fervor. He carried on over her attempts at protest, "I had expected more from a selkie than causing harm to one that is already injured."

"I promise you I did not come here with intentions of harming or harassing anything," the selkie replied with a placating tone. "You must have lived here a long time and know very much about this place to be so protective. I swear though that I mean no harm, I merely came all this way to learn."

The crow made a sound like a 'harrumph' but walked back towards her, tilting his head back and forth as he looked her over. She continued to speak in placid tones;

"You say this creature is injured? Was it set upon by the humans? Does it need aid?" The raven’s words had alarmed her, and her experience in the loch last night came back now with some clarity- she had encountered long ago a great toothed whale who had been pierced by many harpoons. The sounds of his agony had suffused the ocean for kilometers and she now wondered if that was the cause for the unrest she had felt yesterday.

Her thoughts were interrupted as the scavenger shook his head in a very human gesture and walked up beside her head, muttering to himself in frustration. He looked her directly in the eye and spoke again, his raspy voice milder than before.

"She is not wounded, but she is trapped here. Has been since before the time of my mother's mother and long before. The humans here, they know something of her, she has been here so long that they have caught glimpses, sometimes." The bird seemed sad, speaking of this creature. The selkie's heart ached in response.

"She was born here, in a time before our counting, as was her dam. They only need one to make another and when the child is born the parent dies soon after. Some time in the past, in the age of Hugin and Munin, her kind traveled here under the great moving ice mountains that carved the lochs. One did not make it out with the rest when the earth shifted and closed the waterways for a time. We of the sky believe that her species is gone now, lost to time. It is just her in this place they call Ness. And the humans, you should know yourself how obsessed they are with what they do not know or understand."

She did know. Memories of selkie women trapped on land with men holding their seal skins hostage, treasured "selkie wives" to be forced into a Human life. She seethed with anger at the injustice humans always bore upon her world, shifting on her fore flippers and gritting her sharp teeth while looking out to the water with regret. 

She turned back to the raven, himself gazing out at the loch pensively.

"Tell me everything you know. I cannot promise that I can help the creature, but I can promise that I will try."

He looked at her a long moment before responding. 

"My kind call me Cairic. Do you selkies have names for yourselves?"

She nodded gratefully, and said, "We do. My name is Laire."


	4. Chapter 4

The raven has talked with Laire well into the afternoon, the two of them settling warily on the beach and keeping watch for humans as they spoke. 

She learned that Cairic, in fact none of the ravens, had ever spoken to the creature. Nor seen much of it. To their knowledge it did not attempt to communicate with anything living in the Loch or even come near the surface at all in recent years. He knew approximately where it lived but not how to reach out to it. 

What he did know was Humans. His voice had cracked with anger as he spoke of scores of men trawling with heavy metal nets attempting to flush the beast out and capture her. Of divers attempting to breach the depths of the loch and go into her very lair. The brackish waters were luckily incredibly difficult to navigate and the freezing temperatures were a strong deterrent, they had allegedly gotten close but no farther. 

The Humans, he said, seemed to almost worship the idea of creature. Scores of them came from other lands and scoured the loch with binoculars and telescopes and sonar equipment, driving the animals within to madness with stress. 

Laire took to the water again as Cairic rose on his shining black wings to lead her farther along the northern banks. Other ravens kept pace with them, calling encouragement and advice in turn as they dipped and swooped on the breeze. They showed the selkie where the Humans liked to gather on land to watch for the creature and showed her where they had sighted it in the past. 

As they ventured further along the northern basin the sense of depth in the loch beside her grew exponentially. The ochre water seemed almost devoid of life, especially given the scarcity of fish and the absence of vegetation. Many times she had to duck under the surface and travel beneath for a span to avoid being seen by the few humans out on the shore. The ravens told her that if she were seen they would likely mistake her for the creature and an uproar would ensue. The birds cawed and laughed at each other, mocking the Human's notoriously frail senses and pernicious, obsessive minds. She didn't find it quite as amusing, but Laire had spent her entire life avoiding detection whenever possible so the stealth was second nature. 

Lost in her contemplation she swam a ways ahead of the ravens before realizing that they had stopped to circle back on the beach. She backtracked and followed them to a secluded area where they alighted on the branches of a long-dead tree. 

"Why have we stopped, my wise friends?" she questioned as she slid up on the rocks at the waterline. Cairic flew down to land next to her.

"Here we will leave you, skinwalker. This is the edge of the deepest place in Ness. There are other places, other deep parts of the loch, where she may be, farther ahead. But we think your chances of finding her are best here."

She nodded in acknowledgement and turned her body back toward the loch. She looked back over her sleek shoulder and called out to the birds watching her,

"Thank you, for teaching and trusting me. I will try to find this creature and I will stay until I haven't hope left to do so" 

She made to lurch back into the water when Cairic cawed at her abruptly, causing her to lean back towards him as he hopped closer. If a raven could look worried, she supposed he might've.

"Listen, little selkie. We want to see this Loch healed and it's creature safe, but be wary when you dive down. We don't know if it can understand reason or even knows the speech we share, we don't know what a lifetime of entrapment has done to her." His voice rasped with stress and Laire shuffled uneasily, about to respond when he continued; 

"But we think that she must be very large, by now. Much larger than you. And we think she is very dangerous. So go with caution and do not needlessly risk yourself if she is beyond saving." 

The selkie nodded solemnly to her winged companion and hesitantly dove into the water again. She swam at the surface for many meters; feeling the space beneath her yawn endlessly and cause an anxiousness to curl around her spine. She took one last look at the ravens still perched on the shore and took a deep breath before diving downward.

Laire swam down with a single minded haste borne from a fear that if she hesitated she would lose her nerve and turn back. The water was murky and strewn with floating plant debris that occluded her vision, making her paranoia sharpen with each moment that passed. 

Then, abruptly, the water cleared. It was still stained that eerie oche hue but as she looked up she could see a distinct edge of flotsam backlit by the faint sunlight above her. Below was a deep abyss that she could suddenly plainly feel the scope of. Not wanting to waste precious oxygen she progressed, slower this time, watching around her as diligently as she could. A seal's eyes, while suited to a predator, were situated on the sides of their head to account for their oceanic lifestyle where both potential food and danger could appear at literally every angle. In this way she slowly spiraled as she traveled, taking in the entire area almost at once. 

The first thing she noticed was the temperature. Just like the odd currents she had felt as she neared the loch last night she could feel the water warming as she fell deeper. Trout and charr could be seen schooling together in the deep around her. She couldn't judge properly because she couldn't see the bottom or sides of the loch anymore, but the water tasted richer down here, and she imagined that here finally was the life giving vegetation growing needed to sustain the smaller aquatic life. After nearly ten minutes of swimming Laire slid to a halt, suspended by the void around her. She worked up her courage and hesitated only a moment before opening her jaws and calling out. She was singing.

Her voice carried through the abyss like a swirling vibration and she gave voice to impressions she hoped would translate to whatever might rise to meet her. She sang in her way of safety, companionship, trust and compassion. Over and over for long minutes she repeated this roundelay, not certain she was even making sense. She just felt it to be sincere and knew it was her best gamble. 

She had been submerged for close to twenty minutes now and began to feel the creeping tightness in her powerful lungs that spoke of an urgent need to return to the surface. She ceased her calling and began to swim steadily upward, eyes focused on catching the sunlight above that was still beyond her sight and trying not to feel discouraged; she could come back down right after she caught her breath and try again. 

It was instinct that saved her, honed over uncountable decades of dodging sharks and blackfish in the ocean. She could feel the water displacement as something massive surged upwards with immense speed and she contorted her body as quickly as she could to the side just in time to see a head the size of her body flash up on the end of a long, long neck. She only needed to see a glimpse of the long, needle like teeth snapping where she had been only a second ago before she was swimming upwards frantically. 

The creature pursued her. She had to propel herself erratically side to side through the water while still trying to reach the surface as those deadly jaws continually reached out to search for her. In her frantic escape she saw flashes of the creature's face as it tried to grab her, but she couldn't take the time to process her impressions while she fled for her life. The water around her began to lighten as she approached the surface and she suspected that the creature was slowing down. She only risked a look back once she reached the level of floating bracken and then slowed to watch the creature sink slowly back down into the depths. 

She saw its massive body propelled by four rigid flippers with an impossibly long neck supporting that large and lethal head. It spiraled down and she realized that in the swirling water she could hear it, a groaning not dissimilar to whalesong, growing fainter as it disappeared beneath her. 

Laire now was desperate for air and she used her remaining energy to surge upwards and burst through the surface with a hoarse bark. She floated there, ribs heaving and nostrils wide and blowing as she tried to clear her oxygen-starved mind.   
She ponderously paddled her way back to shore and saw with surprise a single raven still perched on the fallen tree. The selkie hauled her exhausted body onto the rocky beach and lowered her head down to rest. Cairic fluttered down beside her and said nothing as she lay there and she knew without asking that he understood what had happened.


End file.
